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leg in the service.
He afterwards raised the Forty-ninth (nine months) Regiment, and went with it as colonel, to the Department of the Gulf.
His gallantry and coolness before
Port Hudson commanded the admiration of both armies.
He was wounded there also.
On his recovery, he was commissioned colonel of the Fifty-seventh, and, when the letter was written, was with his regiment in the Ninth Army Corps.
The Governor concludes his letter as follows:—
You will note that this is the second time Colonel Bartlett has marched from Massachusetts at the head of a regiment, since losing his leg in battle on the Peninsula.
Besides peculiar courage and self-possession in action, he is a young man of fine powers, conspicuous for general mental capacity, and of superior culture.
He is a graduate of Harvard College.
I have the honor now to request, and express my fervent wish, that he may receive at once that commission, as well deserved by an intrepidity and a merit so eminent.
Colonel Bartlett was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers, June 27, 1864, and was afterwards brevetted major-general for brave and meritorious services in the field.
On the 10th of May, the
Governor forwarded to
Senator Sumner a letter which he had received from
Colonel Hartwell, of the Fifty-fifth Regiment, showing the discontent which existed in that and the other colored regiment, because of the refusal of the
Government to pay them the same as white troops.
In forwarding the letter, the
Governor writes,—
For God's sake, how long is the injustice of the Government to be continued towards these men?
Is it intended, by still deliberately withholding from them what the Attorney-General of the United States has decided to be their legal right, to goad them into mutiny, and to quench the mutiny with blood? . . . The wives and children of many of them have been forced into public almshouses by their necessities. . . . If mutiny shall occur, and blood shall be shed, the responsibility will rest, before God, on the Government at Washington. I have not words to express my feelings of indignation and shame at the fraudulent conduct of our Government in this matter, which, since Mr. Bates's opinion, is without a shadow of palliation. . . . I entreat you to see the President personally, and beg him, for the sake of justice and of the country, to prevent the shedding of innocent blood, and to cause these men to be paid instantly.
